Dallas police ambush

‘It’s historynow’

Photos from July 7 revive memories for those at the center of the ambush that killed five officers

By Dallas Morning News Staff

Published July 5, 2017

The images, among thousands taken by Dallas Morning News journalists on July 7 and the days afterward, united us in our disbelief and grief.

Two DART officers whose embrace amid hospital workers was seen around the world. A mother who never imagined she would bury her son. Protesters who peacefully gathered for social justice. A Dallas police officer who grieved for his fallen comrades. The mayor who wondered how the city he led would rise from tragedy.

DART Police Sgt. Homer Hutchins saw the photo minutes after it was taken. The image showed the muscular officer in tears, hugging a colleague and friend, Officer Shamika Sorrells, in the hallway of Baylor's emergency room. He had just learned that DART Officer Brent Thompson had died.

Two Baylor employees flanked the embrace. Sherry Sutton, a nurse manager in the emergency department, stood on the right. Nita Tarango, a social worker, stood on the left.

The image would be shared across social media that night and would run in newspapers across the country, including on the front page of The Dallas Morning News.

Tarango remembers the moment and reaching her hand out to show support.

“I remember putting my hands on them and just praying, praying to give them strength, praying for their safety, praying for their loved ones, praying that they’re going to be able to get through this and that they will continue to have God’s strength and mercy and grace,” she said.

When Hutchins first saw the photo on a colleague’s cellphone, he was angry.

“I just felt like they came in and just kicked my front door in my house and took pictures of my family,” he said. “That was a family moment to me. That was our moment, and it was being broadcast all over the world.”

But he began to see the photo’s greater meaning in the weeks that followed. A black man in his 20s approached him at a gas station in a rough part of Dallas and told him he recognized him from the photo. He said he was sorry for the officers’ loss. A white middle-aged man recognized him at a Wal-Mart and encouraged him to keep his head up. And a Hispanic man came up to him at a Golden Corral and told him he’d been moved and inspired by the photo.

“The picture was hitting everybody, not just police,” he said. “So it became a good thing instead of a bad thing for me.”

Sorrells sees the photo as a reminder of bravery. She keeps the photo in her nightstand drawer with her most important belongings.

“I don’t want to continuously look at it, but it’s safe to my heart,” she said.

For Tarango, the photo’s power comes from its raw emotions: “Out of disaster and tragedy, there’s goodness, and I think that photo shows that, people pulling together that never met in their entire lives and just being there for each other.”

Valerie Zamarripa

Above: Valerie Zamarripa (center) was overcome with emotion during the funeral for her son, Dallas police Officer Patrick Zamarripa, at Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery on July 16, 2016. (Tom Fox/Staff Photographer)

Valerie Zamarripa once took her son’s safety as a Dallas police officer for granted, brushing off any suggestion he might be hurt on the job.

“Oh, no, no, that’ll never happen,” she would tell friends when they asked whether she worried.

But last July, it did happen.

Patrick Zamarripa ran to the chaos during the Dallas ambush, not away from it, his mother said.

Valerie Zamarripa remembers the night of July 7 clearly — the phone call telling her she needed to get to the hospital, the traffic and anxiety on the way there and the long wait to see his body. The rest, though, is hazy. She didn’t sleep for several days because of the chaos.

“The pain of burying your son in a tragic thing like this is so surreal, so unbelievable,” she said, her voice shaking.

She said she’s tried to heal over the past year by praying and by talking about her son in public settings.

“It’s history now,” she said. “And that’s the hard part. That’s what really gets me is that how big this has become because we’re just regular people. He was a regular person.”

Tytiana Long

Above: Tytiana Long held signs during a Black Lives Matter march in downtown Dallas on July 7, 2016. (Smiley N. Pool/Staff Photographer)

Tytiana Long is wary of big crowds. She avoided them for nearly six months after the Dallas ambush.

“You kind of think about every public gathering that could be possibly a setup for something to happen,” she said. “It gets scary.”

Long brought fluorescent posters to the protest. She was photographed in front of the Earle Cabell Federal Building, holding one that read: “All lives can’t matter until black lives matter.”

Long had not seen her photo until she visited The News for a recent interview. She brought the year-old, wrinkled posters with her.

“After the protest, I was like, do I still need these?” she said. “But I thought about everything that happened, and I thought, ‘I have to keep them because this was a huge event.’”

Long had swapped work shifts to attend the march because she wanted to protest the deaths of Philando Castile, shot by police on July 6, and Eric Garner, who was killed in 2014. She said she felt empowered by the diverse crowd at the protest.

Then she heard the gunfire as she was walking back to her car.

She hid with a group of people for what she says were the longest 10 minutes of her life, until a security guard instructed them to get in their cars and “go, go, go.” Long didn’t find out that five officers had died until she got home.

“You just couldn’t believe it,” she said. “It was like, why?”

Long has seen police and citizens in Dallas grow closer since the ambush, but she’s disappointed by the recent acquittals of police officers in fatal shootings of black men around the country.

So, she said, it’s finally time to get back to protesting.

“I can’t sit and not do anything,” she said. “My spirit won’t even let me do that. It gets rumbled up as soon as I see something and want to fight for it.”

— Naheed Rajwani/Staff Writer

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Daniel Sullivan

Above: Senior Cpl. Daniel Sullivan of the Dallas Police Department leaned on a parked police car surrounded with flowers and message of support on Sunday, July 10, 2016. (Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer)

Three days had passed when Senior Cpl. Daniel Sullivan finally took a moment to pray.

The seven-year Dallas police officer was back in uniform — a decision he figured was the best way to cope with the previous 72 hours.

On July 10, he was walking out the front door of DPD headquarters, on his way to work another protest, when he saw a parked police car decorated with flowers and signs. He paused.

He’d hardly slept in the last few days. Hardly had time to stop and gather his thoughts between all the hugs and tears. So he moved toward the police car. He placed his hand among the wreaths and petals and balloons, closed his eyes and started to cry.

Mike Rawlings

Above: President Barack Obama joined hands with his wife, Michelle, and Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings during an interfaith memorial service attended by former President George W. Bush, Vice President Joe Biden and other dignitaries at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas on Tuesday, July 12, 2016. (Smiley N. Pool/Staff Photographer)

Mayor Mike Rawlings was at home July 7 watching the Texas Rangers game when he got a call from Police Chief David Brown.

Brown told him two officers were dead and others were in the hospital.

“Right then, I started to choke up,” Rawlings said.

The mayor’s next few days were a whirlwind of emotions, events and visits with grieving families and dignitaries. The mayor, who also buried his mother-in-law July 7, had to “be on and say the right things at all times.” He knew the world was watching him and the city.

“The question was, are we going to rise to the occasion?” he said.

Then-President Barack Obama thought so and lauded Rawlings and Brown at a memorial days later at the Meyerson Symphony Center. During “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Rawlings felt the president’s hand grab his.

“We held hands for a very long time,” Rawlings said. “So holding hands with the president of the United States for that length of time — I was conscious of it.”

But soon, Rawlings was lost in the moment again. At one point, as everyone bowed their heads, Rawlings looked up to the ceiling.

“I was frankly looking up to God,” he said. “I was saying, ‘What is going on in this world?’”

Rawlings felt a sense of unity overcome him as the song played on.

A year later, Rawlings and first-responders have a much frostier relationship, a product of political strife caused by a tough fight over the failing Dallas Police and Fire Pension System.

He won’t be in town July 7. He’ll have a quiet night with his family on vacation.

Ernest and Nate Walker

Above: Ernest Walker (center), his son Nate (left) and other protesters marched through downtown Dallas during a Black Lives Matter protest on July 7, 2016. (Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer)

For Ernest Walker, the moment was one of his proudest as a father.

A Dallas Morning News photo shows Walker and his son Nate marching side by side near the intersection of South Harwood and Commerce streets, the father with a baseball bat in one hand and a bullhorn in the other, his son raising his left fist. People sometimes recognize them from that photo.

Walker, an Army veteran, says the photo symbolizes his relationship with his son.

“But it’s bittersweet,” he says. It reminds him of the terror they experienced that night.

The Walkers lost sight of each other near the end of the protest because their dog wouldn’t walk any farther. The father continued walking, but the son stayed behind to figure out what was going on with Barack.

Convinced his dad was dead, he ran toward Union Station with the dog and dozens of strangers. The father and son reunited an hour later near the Greyhound bus station.

Ernest Walker, who has friends who are police officers, started protesting police brutality after a cousin and another man died in police custody. After the Dallas ambush, he took on Blue Lives Matter as another cause he supports.

“I’ve never been against cops,” he said. “I’m against bad cops. I’m against bad people.”

Nate Walker, now 19, just completed his freshman year at the University of California at Davis, where he takes part in protests regularly through the school’s Center for African Diaspora Student Success.

The Walkers plan to stand side by side again on July 7, this time at City Hall for a service honoring the officers killed in last year’s ambush.

“On that day I’m pro cop all the way and nothing else,” Ernest Walker said. “And then the day after, right back to saying, ‘No justice, no peace. No justice, no peace.’”

— Naheed Rajwani/Staff Writer

Editor’s Note: The vignette about Ernest and Nate Walker has been updated to clarify the origins of the elder Walker's interest in the issue of police brutality.